


Never Trust a Frat Boy

by caketopper



Category: Produce 101 (TV), X1 (Korea Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Fraternity, Angst, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Falling In Love, Fluff, Friends to Lovers, Idiots in Love, M/M, there is a plot i hope, trigger warning for mental illness and mentions of suicide
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-02
Updated: 2020-01-04
Packaged: 2021-02-27 10:47:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,483
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22085863
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/caketopper/pseuds/caketopper
Summary: Hangyul meets the boy of his dreams in Statistics and Quantitative Reasoning class, of all things.
Relationships: Cho Seungyeon | Seungyoun/Kim Wooseok | Wooshin, Kim Yohan/Lee Hangyul
Comments: 12
Kudos: 62





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> hi i'm new to this ship!! hope you guys enjoy this fic :')
> 
> hangyul and seungyoun are supposed to be frat boys i just didn't find a good time to mention that in this first chapter. and i will continue this! i hope...
> 
> i'm so happy x1 are going to comeback u have no idea this waiting is killing me

Hangyul meets the boy of his dreams in Statistics and Quantitative Reasoning class, of all things. 

It’s one of those compulsory modules all freshmen have to complete in their first year and it absolutely sucked ass. Hangyul isn’t great at simple addition and subtraction on a good day, so a number-crunching, graph-drawing class is his worst academic nightmare. He had planned to use up all his excused absences for class, pay the least attention he could and scrape by with a hopefully smart partner for the final project. All he wants is a pass so he doesn’t have to take the class again next semester.

But all of that flies out the window because now Hangyul _is_ paying attention. There in the middle of the second row, a little bit away from where Hangyul’s hidden himself in the corner of the third, is the cutest boy he’s ever seen. It’s autumn, and he’s basically drowning in the sunny yellow sweater he has on, sweater paws wrapped around a pen as he took studious notes. His soft hair falls just a little too long across his face, barely touching gentle-sloping eyes and a cute little nose. His mouth is pursed in a little frustrated pout as he examines the question the professor had just written on the whiteboard, and Hangyul curses himself for not snagging a front-row seat.Then Cutest Boy in the World giggles, fucking _giggles_ , when his friend whispers something into his ear, and his eyes and nose scrunch up in the most adorable way, and Hangyul doesn’t hear anything the professor says for the rest of class.

He only realises class is over when Cutest Boy in the World (Hangyul needs a shorter nickname, or maybe to actually find out his real name) stands up with his friend and starts packing his things away. He’s pretty tall, Hangyul thinks belatedly, probably taller than me. As the boy makes to leave the classroom, his shirt snags on the back of his chair and rides up quite a bit and _damn_ , his cute button face did _not_ fit that six-pack. Hangyul cleared his throat, slightly embarrassed for staring, and begins shoving his untouched books back into his backpack. He thinks of the cute boy long after he’s left the classroom and high-tailed it back to his room to calm his beating heart and he knows he’s fucked.

His roommate Seungyoun comes in around an hour later, where Hangyul’s alternating between staring listlessly at the ceiling and furiously googling “how to talk to your crush” Buzzfeed articles. 

“What’s up, Hangyul?” Seungyoun approaches him carefully, the way one might coax out a scared stray kitten from its hiding place. Because Hangyul looks nothing short of _manic_ right now, eyes a little wild and hair mussed from clutching at it out of frustration.

“Hyunggggg,” Hangyul lets out a loud wail as soon as he catches sight of him, throwing himself dramatically across his bed. “I’m in love.”

Seungyoun blinks. Processes his words. Blinks again.

“You’re what?”

“I just met the love of my life.”

“What?? Who???” Okay, so this is new territory. Hangyul hasn’t really liked anyone ever, as long as Seungyoun’s known him, which is to say since high school. Except that one girl he spent weeks moping over when he wrote her embarrassingly bad poetry and she wouldn’t give him the time of day. Still, he had been like, fifteen. Turns out Hangyul is just as much of a whiny baby in love at 20 years old. Seungyoun sits on the edge of his bed and pats his head comfortingly.

“I...I don’t know his name. But he’s in my stats class and he’s so cute with his big sweater and his smile and his laugh is like, the happiest sound ever and I don’t know?? He’s so cute???” 

“You don’t know his name?” Seungyoun stops patting his head and swivels around to stare at him in disbelief. Hangyul pouts. “Did you even talk to him?”

“...no.”

“And you’re in love?”

“Hey, hey, I am a big believer in love at first sight!”

“God, you’re pathetic.”

“Help me, hyung,” Hangyul pulls at Seungyoun’s jacket and looks up at him with pleading eyes. “You’re good at talking to girls. And boys. Help meeeee.”

“Okay, I’m offended that you only think of me as a giant flirt.” 

“You’re also my favourite hyung, how about that?”

“No dice. I have a paper due tomorrow morning and I haven’t started, so stop bothering me.”

“But don’t you care about your favourite dongsaeng’s love life?”

“There _is_ no love life to speak of, Gyul. Literally just go talk to him, actually get his name and _then_ come to me.”

Hangyul sighs as Seungyoun gets off the bed and settles himself at his desk. His was a lonely journey.

\---

As it turns out, Hangyul’s luck hasn’t run out yet, because Cutest Boy Ever shows up at the cafe he’s studying at the next day. He had thought he would have to wait a week to see him again in class. Hangyul’s willing to bet it’s fate at this point.

He’s wearing glasses this time and he looks a little nerdy with the round frames balanced on his nose and absolutely adorable. He’s staring again, he knows, until his inner voice (which sounds suspiciously like Seungyoun) hisses at him to “go talk to him, you big idiot”.

Well, his coffee mug was due for a refill anyway.

Hangyul sidles up to the counter as casually as he can and hands his cup over to the barista and oh my god, Cute Boy is right next to him. He kind of smells like Axe deodorant but Hangyul isn’t going to let that deter him. True love persists, basic taste in body spray notwithstanding.

“Hey, you’re in my stats class, right?” Hangyul hopes to God he comes off as chill as he’s trying to be and not like he had seen the guy in class one time and became obsessed with him forever. Because he’s not. Obviously.

“Oh, right! I don’t think I caught your name last time. Hi, I’m Yohan! Kim Yohan,” Cute Boy--no, Yohan--stretches out his hand with a bright smile and everything Hangyul had prepared in his mind just flies out the metaphorical window. Kim Yohan. Yohan. Even his name is cute. This is so unfair.

The barista chooses that exact time to hand over his coffee mug again and Hangyul takes it with great gratitude. Saved by the bell, as it were, or saved from acting like a big fucking idiot in front of golden boy Kim Yohan. “Lee Hangyul,” he manages. “Nice to meet you.”

“Hangyul,” Yohan repeats happily, and he immediately _loves_ the way he says his name, and then Yohan is saying, “hey, are you sitting alone? ‘Cause the cafe’s pretty crowded and I was wondering if we could share a table?”

Woah, Yohan, moving fast there.

But Hangyul is not about to turn down a study date with the future love of his life so he agrees and leads Yohan over to where he was sitting by the window, books and calculator spread all over the table.

“I was actually working on the stats homework and getting really confused so if you can help…”

“Me? Me?! Dude, I still don’t know what a binomial distribution is and I barely passed high school math.” Yohan slaps a stack of books on the table and smiles again (he never seems to stop smiling). “Please take care of me, Hangyul-ah.”

\---

Talking to Yohan is easy. Too easy. 

He’s hilariously bad at math but also hilariously adorable. And Hangyul feels like a broken record, because his vocabulary only seems to consist of ‘cute’ and ‘adorable’, maybe ‘love of my life’ or ‘soulmate’ when it comes to Yohan, but it’s just _true_ . He feels like he falls into place with him like every cliche metaphor ever, like adjacent puzzle pieces and two halves of a whole and those mandarin ducks that mate and stay together forever. The feeling of “where have you been all my life?". Hangyul’s heard horror stories from friends about flirting with an attractive person and belatedly finding out they have the worst possible personality, but Yohan’s charming inside and out and how can someone like that even exist? Hangyul’s in love, no doubt about it, and he’s _hopeless_.

They get so caught up in chatting that all their work gets abandoned. Hangyul finds out they both used to be taekwondo athletes, and Yohan had even been on the national team before he had decided to go to university for music production. And he’s looking to learn some dance as a hobby and, would you look at that, Hangyul’s a Dance major. They have an appointment set up the day after in the dance studio before Hangyul can wrap his head around it. They share song recommendations, and Yohan’s taste is eclectic and weird and all over the place but Yohan punctuates every song with a breathy, excited explanation--”the bass drop here is so good, listen, the amp on the guitar really brings out the background melody”--and his passion is contagious and honestly drop-dead attractive. Hangyul listens more to his enthusiastic jabbering than the actual music and watches the way his eyes gleam. His heart dances in his chest; he’s smitten, he really is.

“Hey, I gotta go,” Yohan says an hour later, a little surprised when he looks at the time on his phone. “Wow, we really talked for a long time. It was so nice meeting you.”

Hangyul’s poor little heart deflates a little in his chest, but he tells Yohan, sincerely, how nice and great it was to meet him, and wonders if asking for his number would be too forward. But Yohan beats him to the punch.

“So, is the four-hour-long talk enough to get your number?” 

Hangyul promises, and he’s never meant it more in his life, to text him.

\---

Seungyoun’s scrolling at something on his phone aimlessly when Hangyul walks in, steps light and heart somewhere in the text message history of his phone, where Yohan has sent him a Tik Tok of a dancing goat with the caption “me when you teach me them moves on Friday. Don’t forget!”. What a dork. Hangyul is in love.

“I got his name,” Hangyul declares longingly as he flops down on his bed. “Yohan. Isn’t that a cute name? I met him at the cafe today, hyung, and we talked for so long, and--”

“Wait,” Seungyoun interrupts him suddenly, brow furrowed. “Yohan? Kim Yohan?”

“Yeah,” Hangyul says in surprise. “Do you know him?”

“I-I’ve met him once or twice,” Seungyoun hedges in the most unconvincing way possible. “He seems nice. He’s in Music, too. I see him around. Anyway, I’m going to, uh, the library, or something. Yeah. See you!”

And Seungyoun leaves hurriedly then and there without his books. Hangyul stares after him, an uneasy feeling in the pit of his stomach.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hangyul and Seungyoun remember.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HUGE trigger warning for mental illness and mentions of suicide!! I have also added this to the main fic tags. And also DISCLAIMER everything here is fictional and does not apply to real life people. I know Seungyoun has had mental health issues in the past, and maybe they are still ongoing and I don't mean to speculate on the specifics of his privacy. 
> 
> Other than that, I hope this enjoy this chapter!

One thing Hangyul just might regret about his college life so far is that he’s in a fraternity.

Yes, you read that right. He’s a frat boy. And he’s not stupid, he knows the stereotypes that come with it: the kind of girl-playing, hookup-having, beer-drinking greasy sleazebag that isn’t like him at all, thank you very much. It’s just that Seungyoun had snagged him a place when he had first graduated high school, and the rent was cheaper than staying in the dorms, and the guys seemed cool and generally harmless and it was nice having a homebase in his first year. The name of the frat is Sigma Pi and it's kind of an arts-based professional sorority, or that’s the direction they're gunning for anyway. Hyungjun, Hangyul and Dongpyo are dance majors, Seungyoun does Music Production, Seungwoo does Vocals and Dohyon is in Music Composition. Junho and Eunsang are kind of floating around as semi-undeclared art majors, but they’ll get there eventually. They’re all good people, and Hangyul’s gotten pretty fond of them in the few weeks he’s lived in the frat house. They aren’t like a traditional frat at all, and Hangyul didn’t even have to drink sludge out of a garbage can or streak naked across the campus to pledge or anything. And they had parties sometimes, but they were mostly chill, small ones that they invited their friends to, with a noticeable lack of girls. Hangyul’s pretty sure at least half of them are gay, and the other half bisexual or pan or questioning or something like that. He’s also pretty sure Junho and Eunsang are dating, but they moved in only recently and they’ve been really lowkey about everything so he doesn’t want to assume. Anyway.

So, it’s understandable that he’s not too forthcoming with his frat boy status when he first talks to Yohan in the cafe, right? He can’t risk the future love of his life thinking he’s some fuckboy hopped up on protein shakes and toxic masculinity. No way. Yohan is going to get to know him first and then one day they’ll just laugh at the fact that he’s a frat boy because he’ll realise he’s not like one at all and they’ll live happily ever after. Hangyul’s got this.

He’s still trying to figure out Seungyoun’s weird freak-out at the mention of Yohan’s name, though, and these days he’s always in and out of the house in a rush so Hangyul hasn’t had a chance to sit him down and make him spill. Whatever it was, it was between Seungyoun and Yohan, and Yohan couldn’t have done anything too terrible, right? Look at the guy. 

Whatever, Hangyul has bigger things to worry about. Like the mirror selfie Yohan just sent him from the dance studio, giving him a thumbs-up and looking soft and comfortable in his oversized T-shirt and sweats. Hangyul can’t help smiling as he sends a “be right there” in response and heads out the door. When he gets there, Yohan’s doing some taekwondo stretches Hangyul recognises vaguely, a funky indie song playing in the background. He sees Hangyul walk in in the mirror and waves cheerily just as he slides into a full-out split. Lord, Hangyul’s going to think about this for _many_ nights to come.

He starts them off with some basic hip-hop moves--the bounce, isolations, popping and locking. Yohan’s an insanely fast learner, and he’s already whining at Hangyul to move on to the next move after a few rounds of practising. 

“Okay, so the next most important thing you learn is how to do a wave.” Hangyul demonstrates, and Yohan whistles teasingly. “So there’s like four steps to this. You push your chest out, then you lean back, hunch in and then you basically kind of do a sitting down motion.”

“Like this?” Yohan’s kind of wriggling around, and Hangyul laughs, moving closer to correct him. “When you lean back, you have to really feel the strain on your abs,” Hangyul says, and without thinking, presses his hand to Yohan’s stomach. He is forcefully reminded that Yohan has a six-pack, has been a national athlete and is just all-around ridiculously well-built and hot and Hangyul is too close to be good for his health, if his racing heart is any indication. He’s not really functioning at this point, so he just kind of--freezes.

The AC temperature is too high, he thinks distantly, because his body feels flushed all over and it hasn’t even been an hour since they started dancing. The studio is way too hot and too big and it’s just him and Yohan standing in the middle of an empty room and Hangyul’s hands are on his body. And Yohan’s still looking up at him expectantly, but also a little meaningfully, and Hangyul reads his gaze and knows he could take a chance, pull him closer, but…

But he could be wrong. There could be nothing at all and this, this _thing_ between them that's fragile and newborn and barely there is too precious to risk. They’d only met twice for goodness’ sake. No, Hangyul is willing to play the long game. He and Yohan are going to be long-term, if he has any say in it. Even long-term friends with Yohan would be okay, as long as he was there, because he was bright and magnetic and smiled like everything good in the world.

“I--” Hangyul clears his throat and straightens up. Yohan follows suit, looking a little embarrassed and a little lost, rubbing the back of his neck bashfully. They stare at each other for a moment, and then Yohan says, “you know what, in exchange for you teaching me your awesome moves, let’s go get dinner. My treat.”

Hangyul smirked. “Dancing _and_ dinner? Slow down there, Kim, I’m going to think you’re coming onto me.”

And that had come out of nowhere, it had been _such_ a risky thing to say and maybe Hangyul’s head is still recovering from being in such close proximity to the boy of his dreams and--

Yohan winks at him. “Keep guessing, Lee.”

Okay, so maybe they’re on the same page after all. New boundaries. Expanding boundaries. They’re allowed to tease each other like this and get a little too close under the excuse of dance practice and maybe Yohan knows they’re going somewhere and he wants to make it right too.

They get dinner that day. And the day after, and many days after that, and sometimes lunch too. They take turns to get the bill. A week or so goes by and they’re about as joined at the hip as new friends can be. Hangyul feels like he’s known Yohan since forever and like he’s going to know him for forever. He learns that Yohan double-knots his shoelaces like a little kid, only takes coffee with two milks and two sugars, that sometimes he catches onto random hipster trends that aren’t really hipster at all, like wearing elephant pants or using a metal straw. They go to that godforsaken Statistics class together and Yohan wordlessly hands him a cup of black coffee at the start of every lesson. He meets Song Yuvin, the friend Yohan was with in their first class, and he’s a pretty chill guy, and Hangyul tries desperately not to seem like he’s vying too much for his approval. So, yes, things are going amazing. Fantastic. Hangyul’s even starting to kind of like this stupid math class.

Until it all blows up in his face.

\---

He’s having dinner with Yohan (again) in his dormitory dining hall when it happens. He’s proud to say he’s already visited Yohan’s room multiple times despite only having known him for a week, and some of his dorm-mates know him by name. Yohan has a single, and Hangyul mentioned he has a roommate, so they’ve just always hung out at his place because Yohan is a sweetheart and doesn’t want to bother anyone. It also means that his whole floor probably thinks they’re dating because no one really knows what they do when they’re in there and that also means Yohan’s single, thank god, Hangyul doesn’t know when he would have brought it up without it being weird. It also serves as a subtle warning, a “back off, I’ve got dibs”, so Hangyul’s pretty okay with it. Well, not dibs exactly, that’s kind of a weird sexist term but Hangyul still likes to think he’s special to Yohan. Probably. He hopes.

But that doesn’t matter anymore because it’s all gone down the drain somehow and it happens so fast Hangyul gets whiplash just thinking about it.

It starts because he sees Seungyoun randomly over Yohan’s shoulder and waves at him out of habit, because Seungyoun was his favourite hyung and he really hasn’t seen him in a while. He’s almost completely forgotten about Seungyoun’s whole issue with Yohan because nothing came of it and he only remembers when Yohan turns, curious to see who he’s calling to, and all the colour drains out of his face.

Seungyoun freezes in his steps.

It’s like being doused with ice cold water, the way Yohan’s precious, precious smile slips right off his face and when he looks back at Hangyul his eyes are hard and unreadable for the first time. Hangyul feels like his lungs are about to give out.

“You know him? Cho Seungyoun? You--” Yohan pauses for a moment, takes a deep breath. “Are you from that frat? Sigma Pi?”

“Yes, but how--”

“Oh my god. Oh my god, I can’t believe I’m so stupid. I get coffee with a cute guy one time and of course he’s a frat boy.”

“Okay, if this is just about the frat thing--”

“No, no, no. No. Sigma Pi, huh? This was all some kind of joke to you, right? Was it Seungyoun? Did he dare you to ask out some pathetic loser and then dump him in front of everyone so you guys can laugh about it? I can’t believe--”

Yohan’s gone off on a rant now, and Hangyul is so incredibly lost he doesn’t know what to say. The only thing he can focus on is his heart squeezing painfully in his chest. 

“Yohan, please,” Seungyoun’s suddenly at their table. “It’s not his fault. He doesn’t know anything. Don’t take it out on Hangyul, this is between--”

“Between you and Wooseok-hyung?” The name seems to hit Seungyoun like a bullet train. “Well, that’s rich, because you haven’t spoken to him in months. He’s still not over you, you know that?”

“I--”

“I’m gonna go,” Yohan says, frazzled, picking up his bag from his chair. “Don’t text me, Hangyul. Or either of you. Just--just don’t look for me again. I thought--”

He pauses for a moment, just a fraction of a second, to meet Hangyul’s eyes, and then he’s hurrying out of the dining hall. So this is why they call it heartbreak, Hangyul thinks distantly.

Yohan’s eyes had been so sad.

\---

Just three months ago, at the height of summer, Seungyoun’s life fell apart.

His father had passed away, Hangyul’s mother told him. He had fallen off the apartment balcony while re-potting some geraniums. An accident. But Seungyoun knew better.

The funeral had been a quiet affair. Hangyul had been there because the Chos had lived next door all his life. He remembered Mr Cho and his weird plant trivia and how Seungyoun had his father’s smile. He had been friendly but reserved, and Hangyul imagined there were lots of things he hid away. Mostly, Hangyul remembered him as a static figure--reading the newspaper on the couch or watching the TV and telling the boys to be careful when they went out to play. The kind of person you grow accustomed to like the pot of flowers on the dining table or the chairs in the kitchen. And when they’re gone, it’s the most sudden, shocking thing.

Seungyoun had cried at the funeral, then spent the next few days quietly holding his mother together as she tried to gather his things. He had failed his music production final because he had rushed home for the funeral and he hadn’t taken the test and he would have to re-do the course all over again the next semester. When Hangyul visited him with ice cream and his favourite sour gummy bears, there was no music playing in his room.

Seungyoun was diagnosed with clinical depression two months later. He hadn’t been surprised. It had always been hiding under the surface, he tells Hangyul. Even before everything happened, there were days where his father looked so impossibly sad and Seungyoun wanted to just lie down and skip the blowing bubbles and the hopskotch matches for the day. Hangyul had only managed to talk him into seeing a consistent therapist last month and even then he had had to physically manhandle him into the counselling room. Because Seungyoun had shut down so suddenly and completely and Hangyul had been completely helpless and afraid, so afraid.

And Wooseok.

Hangyul had recognised the name, vaguely, when Yohan had all but stabbed Seungyoun with it. He had been a--an almost boyfriend, he thinks, before the worst summer of their lives. Seungyoun had brought him up before, and his features always softened through the gritty quality of the video camera when Hangyul Skyped him from his bedroom at home. He had missed him in the year where Seungyoun had gone off to be a cool college student and Hangyul was still stuck finishing up his pathetic final exams in high school, and when Seungyoun mentioned he was seeing someone he had wanted to hear all about him.

He had seen pictures too. Wooseok was definitely handsome, with a small face and sharp eyes and high cheekbones. He had teased Seungyoun relentlessly for liking the pretty type, and Seungyoun had taken it all in stride with such a big grin that Hangyul figured Wooseok couldn’t be anything but good for him.

And he--he actually doesn’t know what became of Wooseok after that time. Seungyoun had just stopped bringing him up and Hangyul had walked on eggshells around him for the entirety of three months and still counting so he hadn’t exactly pried. And now…

Seungyoun sits across from him on his bed. The fluorescent lighting in their bedroom makes him pale and gaunt. He looks defeated. The tattoo on his wrist--one smiley face, one sad face, carved side-by-side--stands out starkly. The skin around it is still kind of red and blotchy since he had gotten it only a few weeks ago.

Hangyul folds his arms and stares Seungyoun down until he speaks.

“So,” Seungyoun starts almost conversationally, but his voice wavers. “So, Yohan is Wooseok’s brother.”

The pin drops. “Never mind Yohan for now,” Hangyul says, and he means it. He’s going to stop wallowing in his own misery because there were things he and Seungyoun had never said to each other and he no longer wanted to treat his best friend like he was made of glass. “You never told me what happened with Wooseok. Actually, after...all that, you never told me anything anymore. Anything important, I mean.”

“You can say it, you know. After my dad died.” Okay, so ripping off the Band-Aid here. Honesty, after those stilted, painful months. Seungyoun sighs and rubs his hands roughly over his face. “I broke up with Wooseok. And I did it in the worst way possible which is why Yohan hates my guts and _your guts_ , by association but just--hear me out.”

Hangyul listens.

“I told him,” Seungyoun takes a shaky breath. “I told him it was all a lie. Some kind of sick joke. A fraternity pledge, or dare or whatever. That I’d never liked him and I was never going to really date him--”

“You told him what?!” Hangyul almost rises out of his seat to shake Seungyoun by the collar, but he resisted the urge. They had to thrash it out. No more secrets.

“I had to make him give up on me,” Seungyoun says, voice hollow. “He didn’t deserve to deal with the absolute trainwreck I was. We had been a kind-of thing for only, what, two months? And you know people get tired dealing with it. You of all people know that.”

“I wasn’t--”

“I used to think you dealt with my shit because you had to. Because we were next-door neighbours and family friends and shit and Wooseok--well, he didn’t have to, because he didn’t know my family and--and he could escape this whole mess, if he just wanted out. I thought...if I could avoid involving him, I would.” Hangyul stays quiet, because he knows this part of Seungyoun’s journey. Funnily enough, healing was always the most difficult part. Seungyoun had had to come out of his metaphorical cave with his wounds and bruises and admit to Hangyul, to his mother, to everyone else, that he didn’t know how to patch them up alone. The light is terrifying, isn’t it? You finally see that you are bleeding out, that red is the colour of life and so it is also the colour of your desperation to keep going. Healing takes so long. Wounds scab over and they itch and you long to reopen them. It’s been a Herculean effort for Seungyoun to be here now, his scars visible but scars nonetheless, a residual memory of a harder time. 

“It took me so long to realise that I can’t stop people from caring about me. That I’m loved and I’m worthy of love and Wooseok can make his own choices but I didn’t give him the chance. I pushed him away and--and now it’s too late.”

Seungyoun is silent for a long moment. Then he says, “you know that--that letter I wrote.” 

The suicide letter. How could Hangyul forget? Seungyoun had burst into his room so suddenly that day, which was more than he done for months, and his eyes had been wild and scared and he had thrust a crumpled piece of paper into his hands like it was burning him. “Tear it up, tear it up, please!” And then Seungyoun was clutching his face and folding into himself and sobbing hard and Hangyul had read the first line--”If you are reading this, I’ll probably be dead” and promptly ripped it up. He stayed by Seungyoun for hours that day, staring at the shreds of paper on the floor like they might disappear with the intensity of his gaze and praying, praying to whoever up there might be listening.

“That’s how I know Yohan. I’ve never told you this but he--he saved my life, in a weird way. I sat there for so long, reading my letter over and over again and I was just--stuck, you know. I was stuck. And then--” Seungyoun laughs at this, and wipes away tears from the corners of his eyes. “This is so ridiculous. Yohan called me. Of all the things to happen, he called me to chew me out for breaking his brother’s heart and I don’t know why I picked up a call from an unknown number but it startled me--awake, or something. He called me a whole bunch of rude names and I thought of Wooseok. And you, and my mum. That there are still people I care about. And that there are people out there who will call up their brother’s garbage ex-boyfriend and tell him he’s a ‘stupid fucking wanker’ and isn’t that a world still worth living in?”

Seungyoun’s laugh is a gross, watery hiccup, but it’s genuine, and Hangyul puts his arms around him to hide the fact that he’s crying, too, because Seungyoun is real and breathing and he can hear his heartbeat if he concentrated hard enough. He had come out of it alive and still smiling and this world is beautiful because it’s not a world where Cho Seungyoun had given up.

“I wrote about him in that letter. I wrote about you and Mum too but Wooseok was the one I really wanted to apologise to. I said...if he ever read this letter, I wanted him to know I was sorry for hiding things from him. That I missed him. That he couldn’t have done anything. But I was wrong, wasn’t I? He could have, if I let him.”

“You have so many issues, you know that?”

“Shush, I get that enough from my therapist, I don’t need to hear it from you, too.”

“You broke up with Wooseok because you have low self-esteem. And because you’re a frat boy.”

“Yes, I got that.”

“You probably know this but I’m going to spell it out for you. That was a hella stupid move, hyung.” Seungyoun whines pathetically in response.

Hangyul lets go of him and flops down on the bed. “Aren’t you ever going to talk to him again?”

“I don’t know,” Seungyoun looks so unsure and hopeful at the same time. “I don’t know--do you think he would want to talk to me?”

“I think he deserves the truth,” Hangyul says. “I think he would want the truth. And I think you--you deserve to be happy, too.”

“Okay. Yeah. Yeah,” Seungyoun lets out a long breath. “I’m sorry I messed things up with Yohan.”

“It’s not your fault you’re a dumbass,” Hangyul says easily. Because Yohan had spent way more time liking him than hating him and true love had its obstacles but they weren’t impossible, right? “I’ll get him to talk to me again and I’ll ask about Wooseok, too. We’re both going to get our happy ending, hyung, I’ll make sure of it.”

Seungyoun just laughs and smacks a pillow over his face.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> THANK YOU for reading wow that was heavy. I didn't know it would get like this when I started writing either.
> 
> Next chapter: Hangyul tries to talk to Yohan and embarrasses the hell out of himself.
> 
> kudos and comments keep me going wink wink :^)

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading and happy comeback soon x1!! 
> 
> how does seungyoun know yohan?? what's the tea on them?? stay tuneddd
> 
> kudos and comments make my day, just saying :^)


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